Registered Charity 1035183 Managers Report AGM 2022
We started September 2021 with a healthy amount on children enrolled and we entered the next stage of ‘living with covid’ with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The team was Myself, Katherine, Ali, Christine, Michelle, Pete & Sally. September also saw the introduction of the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The staff spent two inset days compiling their own curriculum and planning the upcoming academic year. We introduced tapestry, an online learning journal that replaced the old paper style journals.
We started in September by welcoming our existing and new children to the new term. Due to the changes to the EYFS we no longer set topics but changed our routine slightly to reflect the needs of our cohort of children. We introduced a new snack time system, introducing Big Boulders and Little Pebbles. Rather than having our previous rolling snack time café, the children now all have snack at 10am, sitting in their 2 groups and they use china cups and saucers to have their drinks from. This has proved very popular and successful and whilst having their snack staff read them stories, singing and other adult led activities. Another change that was implemented due to covid was the arrival of the children into the garden, we agreed this was working well and beneficial to the children that we decided to keep drop off and pick-ups the same.
We arranged for Lorna from Playball to visit the group each Tuesday for the children to take part in sport skills and activities which has proved really popular.
In October, Katherine got married and became Mrs Blakey, the children were all very interested in her wedding and provided lots of wonderful learning opportunities. Katherine had made ribbon wands for her guests, so the children made their own to be able to wave during the marriage. The children and staff enjoyed sharing her special day by coming in dressed up in their dresses and ties, we then all sat together to watch the ceremony via zoom and in the afternoon sat for a traditional afternoon tea (as our reception). On her return, Katherine bought lots of items from her
big day, including her dress and the children explored them, trying on her headdress, holding her bouquet, and looking at photos.
We also introduced a Thursday nature group, where the children became nature explorers every Thursday afternoon. Each week we planned walks and visits around the local area to places such as the millennium field where the children explored and noticed their ever-changing seasonal environment such as acorns and leaves which they then would use these item s to be creative. This would then be finished with a seasonal book before the walk back to playgroup.
We learnt about harvest which facilitated lots of additional activities such as making soup, where the children used their skills to chop and prepare the vegetables, they strengthened their hand muscles by making vegetable people. We were very excited to be able to host our Harvest celebration at the Church, rather than via zoom for the parents to see. The children told the story ‘We’re Going on a Leaf Hunt’. They made props, and acted out walking over mountains, paddling over lakes, splashed around the waterfall, and stumbled through a forest, then finished off with some wonderful singing. We had a collection for the food banks which parents were extremely generous with their donations.
In November we used our environment to explore autumn and the natural changes as well as Bonfire Night, Remembrance, and of course Christmas. The children honoured the 2 minutes silence on Remembrance Day and as part of nature group, we visited the war memorial at the church and used natural resources to make poppies.
December of course saw the start of all the wonderful activities that Christmas brings. A Christmas themed home area, lots of sensory, snow and iced themed tuff tray activities, dark den and much more…. As part of our literacy curriculum the children wrote letters to Santa in our Christmas themed mark making station. Once written in small groups they walked to the post box to post them giving us another wonderful opportunity for the children to talk about what they could see and hear. After not being able to have our annual Christmas dinner due to the pandemic, we were finally able to host it again this year. Colin and his team form the Half Moon Sheet, kindly cooked us a traditionally dinner and invited some of the children down to the kitchen to see where, how, and what is cooked in the kitchen. A yummy Christmas dinner was enjoyed by all!
Again, we were able to host our Christmas nativity in true Stepping Stones style at the Church, after several years of not being able to. Each of the children took on a small role and performed the story of Ten Christmas Wishes, a story that shares the excitement and beauty that Christmas
brings. Once again, the children were amazing. We finished for Christmas with our Christmas Party with food and entertainment provided by the staff. We were under the impression that Father Christmas was selfisolating, so the children received a visit from Katherine’s twin sister who works in the north pole - Katherine Elf! She had a gift for each of the children and the children enjoyed it just as much! The children loved taking part in Secret Santa, choosing a gift for a loved one, wrapping it up, writing a tag and then bringing it home at the start of the holidays.
At the beginning of January, covid finally got us!! With staff dropping one by one… All staff were amazing, pulling together to cover each other to enable us to remain open.
January always provides lot of spontaneous learning opportunities to explore the natural environment that the weather creates, they used the big field to explore the frost, looking at it glistening and how it sounds when you walk on it and rainy days allowed us to explore puddles and mud, that made an ideal opportunity to be able to make footprints.
With the Big Garden Bird Watch, the children created a bird café for our vegetable garden. The children made feasts for the birds, provided water, and a table. Together the children decided to call it ‘The Birds Aloud Café’
Chinese New Year, we provided the children with a variety of materials, and they explored and learnt about this celebration. They experimented with themed rice, studied Chinese writing, and used their imagination in the Chinese themed home corner. And together created the most beautiful dragon. The children took turns to stand under the blanket and dragon head to create a life size dragon and experimented with their movement and sound to make the dragon come to life, as always it was truly magical.
As part of Valentines the children made heart biscuits, adding pouring, and mixing the ingredients. Once cooked, the children decorated them, using their fine motor skills to pick up the decorations.
On the 16[th of] February, we received the call (after initially missing the first call) from Ofsted, that we would be inspected the following day (17[th] February) after a long 7 years. We were all extremely delighted to be awarded outstanding in every area and felt its testament to everyone’s hard work.
World Book Day this year was very well supported and throughout the week, we decided after the previous year’s success we again asked the children to decorate a toilet roll holder into their favourite character. The
children had a great time talking about them and playing with the characters in various areas.
As part of Mother’s Day, we were delighted to able to welcome our Mummy’s into playgroup across the week for a play, drink, and a slice of cake to celebrate them and show them how much we love them. This was made even more special as the same week we were officially able to share with everyone our Ofsted result and report.
Easter saw another vent performed at the Church, where we hosted our Easter Parade. The children had created the most wonderful Easter hats and bonnets which they paraded through the church for families to see and then told the story of the very hungry caterpillar, followed by some Easter songs. Whilst all this was happening, the Easter bunny must have sneaked into the garden and the children all went on an Easter scavenger hunt, finding Easter pictures in exchange for some Easter treats.
During the month of May we arranged a fundraiser ‘70Km for 70 Years for the Queens Platinum Jubilee’. The children were asked to get sponsored in return for walking, riding a bike, scooting, or swimming throughout the month of May. Families were invited to join us on a Saturday for a walk around the heath followed by a picnic. The sun shone brightly, and this was well supported by our families, helping us get well on our way to reaching our 70km target.
We were very excited that our application to Cultivating Change was successful. Cultivating Change is a seed donation initiative with seed provided by pioneering seed company CN seeds. Their aim is to use seeds in a positive way whilst building a community of growers from a variety of backgrounds. The children helped plant the seeds and we are beginning to see the results with our sweet peas, courgettes, sunflowers, basil, onions and garlic all nearly ready to pick or bloom!
With the sunny weather the children have chosen to be outside more, and we observed some wonderful group play where the children independently instigated creating their own seesaw using the giant pipe, great games of hide and seek and using the resources to cerate their own trampoline. The children have spent lots of time in the vegetable garden, helping to prepare it more for planting, watering the plants, picking weeds and taking on responsibility of garden monitors.
Our pirate theme proved popular with the children as Michelle created treasure baskets, our own indoor pirate ship, treasure counting, giant map making and exploring and sharing various books.
The highlight for the summer term so far must be the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Garden party. The children were involved from start to finish with the planning and preparation of the party which all our families and friends were invited to. The children made bunting using white, blue, and red paint and printed the number 70 and crowns on. They made homemade jam for our garden party, helped decorate the pin the tail on the corgi and made Queen silhouette paintings for decorations. On the day, we set up a long union jacked themed table with cucumber and jam sandwiches (made by the children) and scones and the children’s homemade jam. Families provided abundance of royal themed cakes for all to share, and the afternoon activities consisted of pin the tail on the corgi, crown decorating, cake decorating, making their own individual Royal trifle using lemon swiss roll, orange jelly, custard, mandarins, squirty cream and topped with hundreds and thousands, riding in the giant (homemade) Royal carriage, photo opportunities with a cardboard cut of the queen and a London bus but most importantly lots of fun!
It was lovely to be able to invite our Daddy’s and Granddad’s into playgroup for breakfast in celebration of Father’s Day, we treated them with sausage sandwiches and a hot drink as well as a play and an insight to all that we do at playgroup.
As we reach the final term for some of our families, we have been remarkably busy planning our sports day and leavers party and teddy bear’s picnic.
The children have still been busy taking care of the garden and plan to set up their own shop, selling the produce grown in the garden.
All of this is on top of our everyday playing, building, climbing, exploring, laughing, creating, experimenting, moving, reading, socialising, sharing, game playing, memory making learning journey that we share each day with our precious little people.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the Committee for the time they have given, without a committee, Stepping Stones would not be able to operate.
I would also like to thank our families for their continued support and encouragement. Our families are what make Stepping Stones the incredibly special place that it is, and we are proud of the relationships we make with our families to allow us to have such a warm, naturing and loving playgroup for the children, but most importantly for choosing Stepping Stones.
Finally, to the fabulous Stepping Stones team, who go above and beyond, are hardworking and very dedicated to make Stepping Stones the special place that it is!
Kim Griffiths
Charity No: 1035183
STEPPING STONES PLAYGROUP
STATEMENT OF ASSETS & LIABILITIES FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 AUGUST 2021
STEPPING STONES PLAYGROUP
STATEMENT OF ASSETS & LIABILITIES
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 AUGUST 2021
| Cash Funds Bank Account Deposit Account Total Cash Funds Other Assets Fixed Assets Fees Receivable Other Debtors Total Other Assets Liabilities Trade Creditors PAYE Wages Accruals Fees Repayable Pension creditor Bad Debt provision Total Liabilities Net Assets Represented by; Reserves B/Fwd - unrestricted Excess / (deficit) for the year |
2021 £ 26,935 33,054 59,989 396 30 505 931 164 535 - 100 - 64 - 863 60,057 49,158 10,899 60,057 |
2020 £ 21,773 33,049 |
|---|---|---|
| 54,822 | ||
| 572 261 444 |
||
| 1,277 | ||
| 345 291 4,434 1,725 91 - 55 |
||
| 6,941 | ||
| 49,158 | ||
| 45,909 3,249 |
||
| 49,158 |
STEPPING STONES PLAYGROUP
MANAGEMENT PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT
FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 AUGUST 2021
| INCOME Fees Fundraising Events Donations Photographer EXPENSES Wages & National Insurance Employer's Pension Contributions Training Staff Welfare Cost of fundraising Events Rent & Hire of rooms Repairs & Maintenance Vegetable garden Refreshments & Consumables Outings & Parties Insurance Telephone & Internet Printing, Postage & Stationery Advertising & Promotion Gifts Crafts & toys Accountancy Legal Depreciation Bad Debt provision NET Bank Interest received NET of Receipts/(Payments) |
£ 64,611.00 744.00 1,212.00 1,000.00 594.00 9,709.00 22.00 - 472.00 390.00 761.00 109.00 129.00 30.00 - 1,347.00 1,190.00 - 176.00 - |
£ 91,998.00 1,361.00 33.00 - 93,392.00 82,496.00 10,896.00 3.00 10,899.00 |
2020 £ 78,332.00 629.00 - 19.00 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 78,980.00 (60,555.00) (672.00) 504.00 - (108.00) (7,789.00) - (1,392.00) (1,274.00) (261.00) (759.00) (270.00) (403.00) - (440.00) (1,029.00) (968.00) (100.00) (176.00) (55.00) |
|||
| (75,747.00) | |||
| 3,233.00 16.00 |
|||
| 3,249.00 |
CHARITY COMMISSION FOR ENGLAND AND WALES Independent examiner's report on the accounts Section A Independent Examiner's Report Report to the trusteesl members of STEPPING STONES PLAYGROUP On accounts for theyear ended 31 AUGUST 2021 Charity no 1035183 Set out on pages 1T02 I report to the Irustees on my examination ofthe accounts ofthe above charity {"the Trust.) for the year ended 31 August 2019. Responsibilities and basis of report As the charity's trustees, you are responsible for the preparation of the accounts in accordance with the requirements of the Charities Act 2011 {"Ihe Act l. I report in respect of my examination of the Trust's accounts carried out under section 145 of the 2011 Act and in carrying out my examination, I have followed all the applicable Directions given by the Charity Commission under section 145{5)Ib) of the Act. Independent I have completed my examination. I confirm that no material matters have examiner's statement come to my attention in connection with the examination which gives me cause lo believe that in. any material respect= the accounting records were not kept in accordance with section 130 of the Charities Act., or the accounts did not accord with the accounting records., or the accounts did not comply with the applicable requirements concerning the form and content of accounts set out in the Charities (Accounts and Reports) Regulations 2008 other than any requirement that the accounts give a 'true and fair, view which is not a matter considered as part of an independent examination. I have no concerns and have come across no other matters in connection with the examination to which attention should be drawn in this report in order to enable a proper understanding of the acwunts to be reached. Signed: Date: Name". Maureen Anne Richardson Relevant professional qualification{sl or body IER Oct 2018
(If any): Address: Richardson Pasquet & Co Ltd Southgate Chambers. 37-39 Southgate Street Winchester S023 9EH Section B Disclosure Only comptete if the examiner needs to highlight material matteTS of concem (see CC32. Independent examination of charity accounts.. directions and guidance for examiners). Glve here brlef detalls of any Items that the examiner wishes to dlsclose. IER Oct 2018